


Always

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [12]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 14:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16451366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: A small incident at the Citadel exposes much larger fears Noctis has about the Crown and its costs. When it all feels like too much, and like anything he'll do will never be enough, Nyx swoops in to rescue him from his worries.





	Always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aithilin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/gifts).



> Originally prompted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/179518158257/prompt-time-nyxnoct-and-always) for [aithilin](http://aithilin.tumblr.com/).

In the fairly modest (and Nyx liked to think it was a testament to the Kingsglaive’s skill that it _was_ so modest) archive of incidents that threatened the Crown, the Glaive and Guard were in agreement – for once – that the night’s spectacle was barely worth noting for the record. Certainly not worthy of editing the “155 Days without Incident” board back to zero.

From assassination attempts to suicide bombings; from kidnappings to hostage crises; forcibly removing a disgruntled member of the King’s Council from his chambers was hardly a tale of glory to be toasted over after-hours drinks. A mere skip across the Citadel record, the inexorable orbit of turntable politics spinning ever onwards.

The councilor would be dismissed, his seat replaced by the end of the week, a neutered news statement issued to the press to nibble on for a day, and life would go on. Just another dollar on Nyx’s paycheck. Just another daily disappointment for the King of Insomnia.

Not, however, another nothing to Noctis.

“This is late, even for the Prince.”

Tredd shrugged and shook his head as Nyx checked his watch. It was known throughout the Citadel that Noctis was a late sleeper, and they were fortunate to have Ignis Scientia self-assigned to rousing him for any early morning functions that required his attendance – as well as when he didn’t, too. But when Nyx arrived a little before noon to relieve Tredd of his guard, he was informed Scientia had abandoned the Prince’s chambers that morning without the shambling shadow of their future sovereign in tow.

That worried Nyx. More than he was allowed to let on; to let Tredd, especially – the big mouth, the braggart, the smug bastard that he was – hear a single clue as to just how familiar Nyx was with the Prince’s sleeping habits. Fortunately, the strict switch of the guard rotation spared him having to put on a decent poker face.

“Kid doesn’t know how good he’s got it,” Tredd yawned, already on his way as Nyx took up his position. “Shit, what I could do with that much beauty sleep…”

“With your ugly mug? You definitely need it.”

Tredd flipped him off with all the energy of a garula swishing off a mosquito, and retreated down the hall. Leaving Nyx alone at his station.

The Prince didn’t require a great deal of protection, even if he didn’t demand the barest minimum for his security detail. He was a formidable fighter, all in his own right, and should there ever be a threat against his life, he knew how to save it himself. Still, that didn’t stop the King from enforcing at least one person to look out for him. Whether that be a guard at the Citadel, or a roommate at his apartment, Noctis was never allowed to be alone.

Which was why Ignis’s failure to rouse him from his room concerned Nyx. Ease of surrender in regards to indulging Noct’s sleep schedule – if one could even call it that – was unheard of for Ignis “Early-Bird-Catches-the-Worm” Scientia. It wasn’t often he left the Prince’s chambers empty-handed.

So, something was _off_. _Wrong,_ even. And though it was “highly against protocol” for a member of the Kingsglaive to enter the Prince’s bedchamber without probable cause, Nyx took two looks down either end of the hall, and let himself in anyway. Because of the laundry list of things considered “highly against protocol” by the Citadel’s proprietary laws, Nyx was already guilty of offenses far more likely to cause some clutched pearls and hand-fanned blushes than opening a door unannounced.

Not the least of which included his informal way of addressing the Crown Prince of Lucis.

“Hope you’re not naked, or the Citadel’s going to be down one Glaive for the next three hours.”

He announced himself with some levity, gauging Noct’s mood before he ever picked him out from his sprawl of limbs in the corner of the room. If he responded with a little laugh, or better yet, a witty response, Nyx knew that he wasn’t nearly as bad off as he might have feared. If he responded with silence… well, that would make Scientia’s failure even more distressing.

Much to Nyx’s dismay, his vulgar sense of humor was met with silence – maybe a slight breath of laughter, if he wasn’t imagining it through the drafts in the walls. Nyx double-checked the hallway before closing the door behind him, a quiet click in the quieter room. Whispers of mid-morning traffic and mumbles of deliberating voices through the walls bled up to the Prince’s high tower, scarcely a murmur of sound to distract Noctis from his thoughts.

And Nyx could see he was lost in them. Dark thoughts too, by the looks of it. Thoughts that had been building up onto themselves for far longer than a single night left alone.

“Noct?” Nyx crossed the room on coeurl’s paw steps, light and long until he was crouching down beside him. “What’s wrong?”

The curtains were open at least, sunlight bustling in from the city skyline to chase out the shadows from the suite. Noctis sat against the wall, in the little space between the wardrobe and the window, at once facing the world and hiding from it. His elbows on his knees, hands loosely folded in-between, he leaned his head on the wardrobe to stare out at the city. His eyes were so red around the edges, Nyx feared he’d been staring all night long.

“Nothing,” Noctis lied, dry throat gumming up the vowels.

Nyx cocked a brow and tilted his head, though Noctis didn’t turn his head to recognize the ridiculousness of it. That was the same sort of “nothing” moody teenagers said with pestering parents prodding at their shoulders. Nyx would know, he’d been a teenager. And lived with a teenager who couldn’t always be coaxed to admit to their mother what was bothering her, tasking him with the mission of braving Selena’s room to find out what was wrong; what was “nothing.”

“It’s nothing,” Noctis repeated, firmer, since the first dismissal had no effect. “I’ll get over it.”

“Ah, so there’s an ‘it,’” Nyx said, nodding along to encourage more talking. “An ‘it’ isn’t ‘nothing.’ An ‘it’ implies that there’s _something_ there that’s bothering you.”

Noctis pursed his lips like he was bracing himself for a retort. A snappish order, a bratty command, something rude and spoiled to make Nyx shut up and go away. But they’d been doing this for too long now – this kind of boyfriends, more like lovers, even more like something else thing between them that happened behind closed doors without ears pressed to the other side. They’d faced one another’s nightmares and stood their ground to help each other fight them. If those daemons couldn’t scare Nyx away, nothing else would.

Noctis seemed to realize that – that, or that Nyx’s stubbornness was not mere Kingsglaive gossip, but gospel. He sighed, a heavy, shuddering breath, which drew Nyx’s gaze to the dampness on Noct’s cheeks – tears or cold sweats, he couldn’t quite tell. But he’d shut himself away with these thoughts of his for far too long. Nyx’s stomach curdled to think that he hadn’t noticed earlier, hadn’t known to sneak his way to his side sooner.

“The man that was dismissed from the Council last night…”

Nyx’s brow furrowed, focus sharpening. He didn’t say anything, just sat and waited and guarded whatever secret fear Noctis had to confess from slipping through the Citadel cracks.

“He’s been here since I was a kid,” Noctis said, voice as vacant as the look in his dry eyes, gazing far, far away from the bedroom, from the city, from the present. “You’d never guess that my father was friendly with some of his Council by all the bickering they do. And a lot of them, he’s not. But I remember Silas always being decent. He was one of the few people my dad kept for coffee after the conferences were done. They’d talk and they’d laugh and they’d plot out all these possibilities for the kingdom to bring up at the next meeting together.”

Noctis paused, tension seizing up his body. And Nyx knew the next part was going to be the hardest. The next part would be dragging open a gate he would rather keep closed. Some perceived ugliness he didn’t want Nyx to see him as less for feeling. Nyx dared to reach out and touch him, rubbing a hand against his ankle to promise him he was there.

“Hearing about it later… I don’t even know, it has nothing to do with me, it doesn’t affect me at all, but… It just made me wonder if in the next year, the next five, the next ten…” Finally, Noctis turned wide, fearful eyes up at Nyx. “Is that going to be us? Will it be Ignis, or Gladio, or Prompto? When I’m King, or even before that… What if I say something or do something or do _nothing_ and it puts us right where my dad is now? What if I don’t do enough, or I try too hard, and I end up losing all of you?”

His questions were running together, voice rising on a panic left stale in the loneliness of the evening news. Now, it soaked up the wetness in his eyes and revived itself, frantic and hot, to tumble off his tongue. Nyx reached up and took his hand as he talked, feverish sweat sticking between the lines of Noct’s palm as it clamped into his.

“Nothing lasts forever, right?” Noctis laughed, short and bitter and sniffing to keep himself from breaking out into tears. “So I shouldn’t expect to be this happy forever, should I? That this is all just temporary, these friendships, this love, all the best things that have kept me going all this time? I’ll mess it all up and I’ll be alone and I… I don’t know how to be alone again after all this.”

It was a hard thing to put into words. Nyx could see that in the ruin of Noct’s expression, wetting his lips and shifting his stare and desperately trying to search for the vocabulary that defined this kind of grief. A grief that hadn’t happened yet; the hollowing, swallowing terror of the end. Of the future. Of uncertainty and dread and the chasm of anxiety opening up in his brain to tell him how it was all going to go wrong.

“I can’t predict the future, Noct,” Nyx said, slowly, holding his hand and keeping him safe from falling into that void. “Nobody can. I can’t tell you that nothing will ever change. That you’re not going to wish you could go back in time to a different day to keep something you lost. Gods know if I could go back in, I’d…”

Nyx jerked himself by the collar to stop himself from walking into that thought. He swallowed the steel in that memory, the smoke and the rust and the scourge, put it down in the grave he’d made for it to rest, and went on.

“There’s so much more happiness ahead of you, Noct. There might be times where it seems like there’s not, where you’ll love people and then they’ll leave and it’s going to hurt so much, feel so unfair, feel like you’re never going to have anything like that again…”

His throat closed on the smile of his sister, but he took that smile and he made it for himself and he squeezed Noct’s hand so tight it hurt better than that old pain.

“But then you open your eyes to something so much better. And you, especially, are never going to be alone, little king. Because I _know_ those friends of yours are stuck to you like old gum under a park bench.”

Noctis blubbered with laughter, covering his mouth as if he could take it back. Because he wanted to be miserable, he wanted to be unconvinced and afraid that all of his worries were right, and he wasn’t good enough to be this happy. He wasn’t strong enough or handsome enough or funny enough, talented enough, cool enough, daring enough. He wanted to be better off alone. But come what may, he’d always have someone there with him.

Nyx ran his thumb across Noct’s knuckles, rising and dipping into each groove. “As for me, I’m with you for as long as you want me, little king. And I really hope you want me for a long, long time.”

Noctis nodded, roughly, still raw from all of his anxieties. It wasn’t an answer that Nyx wished he could give him. He wanted to promise him forever. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted, after all? An eternity of happiness? He wanted so badly for him to have that, knew that he deserved it. But whether or not he could make eternity an infinite number of years, or just one more day, one more after that, was for the future to decide.

Noctis clutched his hand in his, the faultless, ivory skin of royalty over his marked, brown fingers. There was a promise there. Nyx was sure of it.

“Stay with me?” Noctis rasped.

“Always.”


End file.
